The Tufts School of Medicine on March 15 celebrated "Match Day," when fourth?year medical students learn which residencies they will work for the next three to four years. This year's Match Day marks the first 32 graduates of the "Maine Track" program, a teaching partnership between the Tufts School of Medicine and the Maine Medical Center (MMC), which accepted its first students in 2009.
The Maine Track was created in 2008 as an effort to remedy the lack of physicians available to rural residents of Maine, according to Academic Dean for the Maine Medical Center Peter Bates. While Maine's rate of physicians per capita is not notably low, Bates said, the number drops dangerously in rural areas. Residents are often forced to drive long distances to reach the nearest physician.
Bates said that the Maine Track program is intended to address this need by training students with a particular interest in practicing rural medicine. The Maine Track was created when the MMC decided to be part of the educational effort, but found it impossible to give students the basic, pre?clinical science training they would need before studying in the hospital environment. They partnered with the Tufts School of Medicine, and Tufts provided about one?and?a?half years of laboratory training in Boston before shipping students out to study in Maine.
"Tufts was the perfect partner," Bates said. "It's really only been five years and we've already had a class graduate. In addition to providing access to medical school, we've launched a new curriculum that emphasizes the virtues of a rural healthcare career. To have accomplished that and graduated our first class within five years is a pretty good track record."
Once in Maine, students rotate among classes with topics such as internal medicine, surgery and obstetrics/gynecology, Bates explained. Later, each student is given a panel of 60?100 patients to follow for approximately nine months, keeping track of health needs on an outpatient basis. During this time, students have a chance to experience the unique trials of practicing rural medicine.
"You have a different kind of healthcare issues," Bates said. "Tobacco use and lower socioeconomic status are much more prevalent than in an urban area, and access to healthcare is as much or more of an issue."
According to Tufts School of Medicine Dean of Student Affairs Amy Kuhlik, 13 students will be taking residencies in Maine this year out of a full class size of about 200. Bates said that fully half of the Maine Track students had chosen primary care residencies, compared to only 10 percent of students on a national scale.
Fourth?year Maine Track student Jasmine Chiang said she was excited to work in an area she had grown to love on childhood skiing trips. She sees the program as a unique challenge for medical students willing to work within a small community.
"It's a different type of patient, a different type of population and a different model of care that you have to provide," Chiang said. "It takes a doctor who's comfortable with a very small community setting where people know each other and people talk. They'll see you outside the medical setting, within the community, so you're more transparent and that makes it different."
Chiang said she will be returning to the MMC next year for an OB/GYN residency.
Optimistic about the program's chances of improving the state of health care in Maine, Kuhlik said it is a mission without any clear end.
"I don't think you ever solve the problem," Kuhlik said. "Physicians are in a constant state of starting practices and retiring, so there's no way we're glutting the market. We're hoping that a good number of them will go back and practice rural medicine in Maine."
